March 12th: Climate Interactive at Oxford discussing future energy scenarios

Climate Interactive Co-Directors Beth Sawin and Drew Jones will be giving an interactive presentation tomorrow, March 12th, at Oxford Universtiy’s Saïd Business School on our global energy model En-ROADS.

 

The event:

‘En-ROADS: Interactive Experiments with a Policy-Maker-Oriented Global Energy and Climate Simulator’

Tuesday 12th March 2013, 12.30 -14.00

Seminar Room 14, Saïd Business School

Event abstract:

The Earth’s climate and society’s energy infrastructure are each complex dynamical systems driven by multiple feedback processes, accumulations, time delays and nonlinearities, but research shows poor understanding of these processes is widespread, even among highly educated people with strong technical backgrounds.

Existing climate and energy models are opaque to policymakers and too slow to be effective either in the fast-paced context of policymaking or as learning environments to help improve people’s understanding of climate dynamics.

In this interactive session we will together run experiments in En-ROADS (Energy-Rapid Overview And Decision Support), a transparent, intuitive policy simulation model developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan that provides policymakers, negotiators, educators, businesses, the media, and the public with the ability to explore, for themselves, the likely consequences of energy, GDP, land use, and GHG emissions policies. The model runs on an ordinary laptop in a fraction of a second, offers an intuitive interface and has been carefully grounded in the best available science. We describe the need for such tools, the structure of the model, and calibration to climate data and state of the art general circulation models.

En-ROADS is an extension of C-ROADS, the climate simulator that is being used by officials and policymakers in key UNFCCC parties, including the United States, China and the United Nations.

Climate Interactive is a U.S.-based not-for-profit organization that helps people see what works to address climate change and related issues like energy, water, food, and disaster risk reduction. Climate Interactive employs system dynamics modeling, which was invented at MIT Sloan in the 1950s.

Sawin and Jones are co-founders and co-directors of Climate Interactive – www.climateinteractive.org. Both hold their degrees from Dartmouth College and MIT.

Thanks to the event sponsors:
Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford Martin School, and the Saïd Business School

World Energy Exercise: Putting You in Control of Our Energy Future

Climate Interactive has developed the World Energy Exercise to provide a simulation-based experience to help deepen participants’ understanding of potential policy and investment scenarios to address our global energy challenges. Recently, Drew Jones led a version of World Energy for 100 energy graduate students at Stanford University. More on the event is here. The video below summarizes that event.

Carbon Prices, Regulation, and New Technology: En-ROADS Shows if it Will Work

With Climate Interactive’s En-ROADS simulation it becomes possible to try out differently energy policies and scenarios and quickly see how they will effect our world. Recently Climate Interactive Co-Director Beth Sawin led a workshop to exhibit the features of En-ROADS and explore the insights it provides. Below is a review of the event from Sarah Parkinson at the Donella Meadows Institute that explains some of the interesting results that the En-ROADS  simulation provides.

Using the En-ROADS simulation tool to visualize our energy choices and understand their implications

by Sarah Parkinson, Donella Meadows Institute

When we talk about climate change, we’re really talking about systems—a whole web of linked issues. We can’t really discuss the eroding health of our planet without bringing up the causes of that decline, such as habitat destruction and resource extraction. Mention of resource extraction brings us to the extractive fossil fuel industry, which in turn brings us to our economy of cheap energy. From the economy we can easily segue to issues like continuous growth and the recent economic crisis, which lead to questions of wellbeing and security. And security connects right back to the threats of climate change. These are all complex, interconnected challenges that affect our lives. And, as Elizabeth Sawin remarked at a talk last week, “Humans aren’t doing a very good job of managing that complexity.”

Copenhagen Goal Within Reach, But Only With Global Action Far Beyond Today’s Most Ambitious Actions

Even if the world also has sustained success eliminating deforestation, reducing emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gasses and improving energy efficiency, new investment in fossil fuel infrastructure can’t occur much beyond 2015 in order to maintain a 50% chance of limiting temperature increase to 2°C in 2100.  Having a higher probability of achieving the 2°C goal or keeping these even odds of meeting the goal but delaying the end of the era of fossil fuel investment would require additional measures such as shutting down already-constructed fossil-fuel-using infrastructure before the end of its useful lifetime, further reducing energy demand, or achieving so called negative emissions, where CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and sequestered.

The goal of the Copenhagen Accord – to limit temperature increase to 2°C is still in reach – but the actions to get there are far beyond what we see being implemented around us today.

A thought experiment with our En-ROADS global energy model makes this clear.

What if, in 2015, we eliminated any new investment in fossil-fuel-using infrastructure, anywhere in the world?  En-ROADS shows a surge in creation of new low-carbon energy sources, and an improvement in the global temperature by 2100 compared to ‘business as usual’. Rather than the 4.5°C of temperature increase under ‘business as usual’, the scenario results instead in 3.2°C of warming.

In this thought experiment using the global energy system model En-ROADS, there is no new investment in fossil fuel using infrastructure after 2015, but the long lifetime of the existing infrastructure means that fossil fuel use continues well into the century.

Eliminating new fossil-fuel-using power plants, automobiles, and factories just a few years from now sounds very drastic, of course, so why don’t we see more impact on the global temperature? The figure to the left helps explain why: even though no new infrastructure is built after 2015, the existing infrastructure lives on (and continues to produce CO₂ emissions throughout its lifetime), only fading away in the second half of the century. (See the black wedge of energy from coal and the red wedge from oil in the figure).

Plotting the Clean Energy Transition: Grad Students Use En-ROADS for New Insights

Stanford students debating energy policy with En-ROADS

Last week graduate students at Stanford University got a special treat. As part of the Energy@Stanford & SLAC conference, students in energy-related fields at Stanford got to play with En-ROADS, Climate Interactive’s latest simulator, which demonstrates how different energy policies could make a difference in the decades to come. Exploring whether the accelerated retirement of coal-fired power plants paired with subsidies in renewable energy will help us reduce our emissions better than a $50 price on each ton of CO2, is just one of countless policy configurations that the En-ROADS simulation lets users explore. The Energy@Stanford & SLAC conference was co-sponsored by Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy, SIMES, the Global Climate and Energy Project, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Office of the Vice Provost of Graduate Education at Stanford.

Eileen Claussen on En-ROADS: We Have Our Work Cut Out For Us

Recently Drew Jones was down in Washington DC working with the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) and their Business Environmental Leadership Council to explore future energy and climate scenarios through interactive “what if” testing. Lots of interesting dialogue unfolded with this diverse group. Eileen Claussen, President of C2ES, had this to say about our En-ROADS simulation, which helped ground Jones’ session in the dynamics of energy and climate systems:

The team at Climate Interactive have created a powerful educational tool in their En-ROADS model. At C2ES, we have experimented with the simulation both internally and with our Business Environmental Leadership Council, and the results have been both informative and illuminating.  It is easy to make assumptions about the contribution that certain sectors, actions or technologies can make to reduce global GHG concentrations – and this simulation demonstrates in real-time how one’s assumptions and mental models are not always correct.  En-ROADS teaches us that while it is still possible to avoid dangerous climate change, there are indeed no silver bullets to reach this goal, and we have our work cut out for us.

-Eileen Claussen, President, Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES)

Webinar: Climate and Energy Scenarios for a World that Works

This month Climate Interactive is holding a free webinar series, open to anyone, to demo our latest simulation En-ROADS, which allows us to try out different energy scenarios to work towards a world that works. We have held three wildly successful webinars so far and have two more next week. Although we haven’t released En-ROADS, we are showing it to you to explore all the areas where it could be used and seek additional support to prepare it for wide-spread use. Select one of the two times below to reserve your seat before this opportunity passes by!

- Tuesday, May 22, 2012 1:00 PM–2:00 PM EDT (GMT -4:00)
- Friday, May 25, 2012 9:00 AM–10:00 AM EDT (GMT -4:00)

Drew Jones Shares Insights on Natural Gas as a Climate Bridge Through Interactive Simulation

We know that coal is not our ticket to keeping the planet cool, but does an anything-but-coal solution work? In this video Climate Interactive Co-Director Drew Jones uses our new simulation En-ROADS to see how natural gas effects climate and the transition to a clean energy future. On the one hand, natural gas is not coal and it is cheap, but on the other it isn’t renewable energy either and it still pollutes — natural gas fits into an anything-but-coal scenario but can it put us on a path to limit warming to 2 degrees by the end of the century?  Watch this recorded webinar to find out and also see Drew explore other areas that could help us reach our climate and energy goals from carbon prices to energy efficiency.

 

En-ROADS Exploration of Climate & Energy Scenarios from Climate Interactive on Vimeo.

If you have questions about En-ROADS or would like to see more, please join us on May 22nd at 1:00 PM EDT (4:00pm GMT) or May 25th at 9:00 AM EDT (1:00 PM GMT) for a similar interactive webinar.

 

Explore Energy and Climate Scenarios on Free En-ROADS Webinar

Join Climate Interactive for a free webinar on sustainable energy scenarios and how they are shaped by policy and investment using the yet-to-be released En-ROADS computer simulation. Participants will get to try out, in real-time, scenarios for the development of natural gas, renewable energy, Carbon prices, technology innovation, deforestation, and several other variables. The lightning-quick simulation will then illuminate insights, some that may be new, about what will work to address climate change and the energy transition.

Please select the time that works best for you and register to attend the webinar:

Cheap Natural Gas Has the Potential to Weaken a Critical Feedback Loop Needed for the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy

Early adoption of renewable energy helps jump start the transition to a low-carbon economy via a reinforcing feedback loop. Anything that diminishes early adoption of renewable energy – including competition from ultra-cheap fossil fuels -  slows down this  transition.

Recent reports that unusually low natural gas prices in the US may be weakening homeowner’s enthusiasm for investing in solar panels are  a cause for concern, especially considering a dynamic we have begun exploring with En-ROADS (our interactive scenario-testing tool that explores the dynamics of creating a low-carbon economy). In En-ROADS, just as described in the latest news accounts, when there is a lot of cheap gas around the growth in renewables tends to be slower.

On the surface, these reports seem to be telling the tale of a one-time event: cheaper gas this year means fewer new solar installations this year. That’s true, but it’s not the whole story.

Consider the  virtuous cycle shown in the diagram above: with more units of solar  installed there is more learning by doing. Costs  of solar fall, leading to greater attractiveness of solar and even more units of solar installed, and so on.

But here’s the glitch – if the falling cost of natural gas makes  the attractiveness of solar decline, then the early installations that launch the virtuous cycle falter, and the whole reinforcing process can lose momentum.

The impact of cheap gas is NOT  just a smaller number of new installations this year; it’s a future loss in the speed at which solar becomes more affordable. Think of money not invested in a retirement account; it’s not just that the balance is lower, but that a lower balance earns interest more slowly.